In Michigan, GOP Senate candidate makes a Canadian

In Michigan, GOP Senate candidate makes a Canadian-sized gamble on trade Former Rep. Mike Rogers is trying to stake out a nuanced position on President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada, which will have a disproportionate effect on his state. 09/09/2026 05:00 AM EDT GOP candidates in states bordering Canada are running far away from President Donald Trump on trade. Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, however, is taking a more nuanced — but politically risky — approach. The former representative, who’s locked in a heated race for Michigan’s open Senate seat, is arguing that some of the tariffs Trump imposed on Canadian goods last month are “necessary,” as he said in a recent statement — a nod to the state’s manufacturing sector, which has been gutted by cheap foreign imports in decades past. At the same time, he’s suggesting he has the pull to help bring an end to the trade war that threatens his home state, which does roughly $80 billion in trade with Ontario, Canada, each year, according to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce . That’s a contrast with other northern Republicans running for Senate this fall like Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and former Sen. John Sununu in New Hampshire, who have unequivocally condemned Trump’s escalating trade war. Even Rep. John James, the GOP nominee for governor in Michigan, has taken a more critical stance in recent days, saying in an interview he did not want the state to be “a pawn in these trade negotiations.” Rogers isn’t the only GOP official attempting to straddle the line between defending his state’s interests and defending one of the president’s signature policies. But he may have the toughest time pulling it off of any of them, given the stakes for Michigan and for his Senate race, where Democrats are increasingly honing in on the Canada trade war. “If you’ve gotta explain what’s going on in tariffs, the longer you explain it, the more you’re losing,” Jim McFerran, chair of the Republican committee of Wayne County, which includes all of Detroit, warned in an interview. McFerran added that it’s a particularly challenging issue for Republican candidates because the president has done a poor job of laying out how Canada has been an unfair trade partner for years. “It’s too hard to explain because it hasn’t been explained well.” Rogers’ campaign referred POLITICO back to his August statement on Trump’s Canada tariffs, as well as a recent announcement from Detroit-based auto manufacturer General Motors that it will shift $4 billion worth of production from Mexico to three different U.S. plants, including one in Orion Township, Michigan, which the campaign indicated was a product of Trump’s trade agenda. Rogers has also tried to link the trade conflict with Canada with the threat of cheap auto imports from China, arguing Beijing could use the United States’ northern neighbor as a conduit to flood American markets. But despite supporting some of Trump’s protectionist trade policies, leading voices in Michigan’s auto sector are condemning his newest trade war. United Auto Workers “rejects any escalation on Canada, a country with strong unions and labor standards,” the union’s president, Shawn Fain, said in a statement on the new U.S. tariffs on Canada that went into effect last month. “If we’re going to increase tariffs anywhere, it should be on countries where automakers continue to offshore jobs because they can pay workers $3 an hour, force them to work in unsafe conditions, and crack down on independent unions.” An auto industry executive, meanwhile, said Trump’s threat to hit Canadian auto and parts imports with a 50 percent tariff on Jan. 1 would be “cataclysmic” for the sector. The person was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president’s policies. Roughly $1.3 billion in Michigan exports face Canada’s new counter-tariffs, according to a POLITICO analysis, one of the highest amounts of any state. And many of the state’s largest employers, including automakers, the dairy industry, appliance manufacturers and other industrial suppliers, all stand to take a particular hit from the duties, which stretch from 15 to 50 percent. “Products will move back and forth across the Michigan-Ontario border, potentially multiple times during the food production process,” said Chuck Lippstreu, the president of the Michigan Agri-Business Association. “That underscores the importance of the two-way trading relationship with Canada … especially for a border state like ours that also sits on one of the busiest trade corridors on the continent.” That’s also true for the auto industry, which represents roughly a quarter of the state’s gross domestic product and employs hundreds of thousands of people. Parts and manufacturing of many leading American vehicles take place on both sides of the border — Ford’s F-Series Super Duty truck, for example, is made in a new plant in Oakville, Ontario. Its transmission comes from Ohio. Its axles come from Michigan. Its engine comes from Ontario. The tariff tit-for-tat with Canada “further undermines [Republicans’] ability to make a strong argument on the affordability issue, given the impact that it is likely to have and has had over the last several months,” Jason Roe, a Michigan-based GOP strategist who used to be executive director for the state Republican Party, said in an interview. Given that economic reality, Roe said he suspects “the administration would probably give Michigan Republicans a little bit of latitude” to break with the president on the tariffs the way other border state GOP candidates have in recent weeks. Collins has been unstinting in her criticism while campaigning in Maine over the weekend, while contradicting White House claims that the tariffs won’t hurt the U.S. The administration, she said in an interview, “has very much underestimated the impact on Maine families, on small manufacturers, on our agricultural products. … They look at this issue as a macro issue. And in fact, the micro-impact on a state like Maine is considerable.” Collins was one of the few Republicans who has consistently spoken out over the past year against Trump’s tariffs, not just on Canada but on other major trading partners and allies like the European Union, Mexico and Japan. Most GOP lawmakers have maintained that the duties are a necessary but temporary part of Trump’s negotiating strategy. Michigan Republicans, too, have been trying to have it both ways on tariffs, said Jarrett Skorup, a spokesperson for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market policy think tank based in Michigan. “They’re trying to kind of take a middle ground, like we gotta have a good trade policy because other countries are harming us, but they also aren’t necessarily defending all the tariffs,” said Skorup, “particularly this latest round, which are leading to fights with Canada, because that is traditionally Michigan’s No. 1 trading partner.” After Trump escalated trade tensions with Canada last month, many more Republicans are now raising public alarms. Rogers, however, has not tried to create much daylight with the White House — on trade or otherwise. He attended a rally with Vice President JD Vance in Sterling Heights, Michigan, on Aug. 31 hosted by the pro-Trump super political action committee MAGA Inc. Rogers is also one of two Senate candidates with a confirmed speaking role at the midterm convention Trump is hosting later this week in Dallas. In an interview last week on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Rogers argued that his relationship with Trump would help — not hurt — Michigan on trade. “You can send somebody back who gets up every day and tries to gouge the president’s eyes out or you can send somebody back who’s going to walk in and say, ‘Hey, can we work on this part of the trade deal?’ The Canadians have not been good partners on this,” Rogers said. When the president threatened to shut down a new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, that was built to ease congestion and promote trade, Rogers voiced support. “Canada just took Chinese-made cars and dropped them down from 100 percent tariffs to a 6 percent tariff. I would like the president to have some leverage to stop thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese-made cars pouring over the bridge,” he said. “Do you know who that hurts? It hurts Michigan autoworkers.” Gus Ghanam, the chair of the Macomb County Republican Party in the suburbs of Detroit, said he thinks Rogers is right to stand with the president on trade policy, but acknowledged that trying to justify any jump in prices during an election is “a tough thing to say to somebody.” “The message should be, ‘You might have a little discomfort now, but in the end, you’re gonna be happy,’” Ghanam said. It’s a risky approach. Even before counter-tariffs went into effect Tuesday, Trump’s approval in the state was sinking. A poll by Michigan State University conducted late last month found that only 34 percent of Michiganders view the president favorably. A statewide poll by EPIC-MRA around the same time found that 63 percent of respondents feel the national economy has gotten worse over the past year. “Donald Trump is launching this trade war for his own vanity, and he’s asking Michigan families to pay the price,” Abdul El-Sayed, Rogers’ Democratic opponent in the Senate race, said in a statement. “Trump has been failing Michigan through these chaotic tariffs and bad trade deals for far too long. Mike Rogers won’t do anything but rubber stamp them.” El-Sayed has leaned into the issue in recent days, bringing up the tariffs last week when asked to respond to Vance’s recent comments that “there’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil.” El-Sayed’s campaign even released a “The Price is Wrong” video that parodies the long-running game show by asking voters to guess “just how much everything’s gotten more expensive over the last year because of Trump’s tariffs and his war in Iran.” “This is going to be felt up and down our state in a more significant way than others, and this is on the mind of virtually every single voter,” said Lon Johnson, the former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. “It’s very important for Abdul to continue to drive that distinction with Rogers on this issue.”